Phrag. fischeri

[Rick]

sounds likely, and though things can grow close together in the woods/jungle, sometimes the microclimate is different. if one species is growing in a slightly higher or lower spot, or one that is wet but not cliff runoff and other is on cliff, there likely are different root conditions, though from a distance they both may look like they grow 'sunny, wet and hot'. especially if under one tree there is one mycorrhizae and another under the other (just examples for thought)

That's always considered, but I've done a lot of niche analysis for different organism groups over the years and that level of detail rarely becomes important. Even at the orchid level, the habitats that I see things growing in New England are quite a bit different than down in North Carolina and Tennessee. Then our conditions in the GH are nowhere what they are in the jungle. The range of physical conditions are highly variable, and when you boil it down to a scale of a foot or so you really end up with about 99% overlap of physical condition parameters.

Also I can't recall where,but a recent paper I saw on orchid mycorrhizae indicated that species specificity wasn't what is was initially thought to be for a large grouping of tropical species. Lots of overlap.

But I bet top dollar the pollinator that takes care of longifolilum is different from the one that deals with fischeri and same for most of the other flowering plants (barring temporal separtion of species using the same pollinator).